Robots Write Romance. Blockbuster Video Tweets. Dark Y2K.

It’s awfully hard not to add links and opinions on current events after a week like the one we just had here in the U.S. But in compiling this newsletter, I always assume that everyone’s been doing their own reading throughout the week - and subscribers of this newsletter reside in 38 countries (we checked) and counting. If you’re curious about my views on current events, it’s not hard to find them on Twitter and Facebook. Here are the this week’s links:

When, how, and why did America (and many other parts of the world) become untethered from reality? Could there even be an upside to this madness? This article takes a deep dive and is well-worth the long read. Highly recommended.

I’ve read some poetry written by Artificial Intelligence. After a few early attempts, the robots got the hang of it and the genre turned really dark. Romance novels, however, might be a sweet spot for AI, based on these titles generated by robots.

North Korea’s 25m citizens are surprisingly wired. Perhaps half of all urban households now own a “sort of smart” phone. This gives citizens more access to content - and also allows the government to monitor what people are watching.